Numerous surgeries and other medical procedures are performed in hospitals and medical buildings everyday across the world. Depending on the type of surgery being performed, there is usually surgical and/or bodily fluids that are encountered during the procedure. Medical personnel use collection pouches to collect these fluids to prevent spillage of the fluids, to keep the fluids away from the patient, and to protect operating room personnel. Medical personnel, therefore, desire that these collection pouches be easy to use and perform their function in a reliable manner.
Some previous collection pouches have malleable wires around a perimeter of their open end that allow medical personnel to shape the perimeter of the collection pouch in a desired configuration. However, once the malleable wire is shaped in a certain way, it stays that way or collapses under pressure. Collection pouches having these malleable wires may be inadequate to conform adequately to a portion of a patient's body or to fully support the pouch when open. In addition, when a surgeon is finished with a particular positioning of the surgical tool, then one portion of the perimeter of the open end may be in such a position that surgical and/or bodily fluids leak out of the collection pouch and onto the floor, which is undesirable.
Some previous collection pouches have a foam material around a perimeter of their open end that offered some stiffness to the perimeter so that the pouch could stay open, yet be resilient enough to allow a surgeon to position his or her hand or a surgical tool without much resistance from the foam material. However, these foam-rimmed pouches were unreliable. Because of the environment the pouch is used in, the foam material has a tendency to crackle and peel to the extent that some of the foam material may fall into the surgical area, which is undesirable. To address this problem, the foam material was encased within a housing. However, these types of pouches had packaging and shipping problems, as well as additional manufacturing expense.